Nothing special, just playing around for anybody interested:

http://www.breadcetera.com/?p=477

SteveB

www.breadcetera.com

Last weekend I had lunchtime occasions lined up on both days.  On Friday morning, I began a large batch of Bouabsa-style dough at about 72% hydration.  I baked half of it on Saturday morning and put the remainder back into refrigeration.  Lunch rolled around, and I collected the usual lot of compliments and superlatives (only I could see the imperfect slashes, the slightly under-caramelized crust at the flanks, and so on). 

Sunday morning I baked the second half of the dough, after fermenting 48 hours in the refrigerator instead of the prescribed 24 hours.  I was afraid the long fermentation would produce a flavor that I don't know how to describe, but that is outside the spectrum for baguettes, more like a strong sourdough.

In the event, they came out just fine, even better perhaps than the 24-hour product.  This time, at lunch, even I thought they were pretty good. 

How long can this process be pushed?  Can we make dough on Sunday, and then proof a single baguette from it every morning until Thursday or Saturday?  I've done that with pita before, that is, I kept a batch of dough in the frigde, and scaled off what I needed meal by meal.

I made Don's Baguettes a l'Ancienne with Cold Retardation. I used fresh yeast and and Sel Gris de Guerande salt. The flavor is excellent! I baked these the same amount of time as other baguettes using Dmsnyder's  Anis Bouabsa's baguettes formula, but didn't get the darker crust -my crust has never been as dark as David's, but still excellent. I was concerned about over baking them, the internal temp was 200+ degrees. I want to thank Don and David for their great recipes. I just started baking recently and your posts have been very informative.

Jonathan

I have been trying to make a good baguette and reading up on this site, I discovered the whole discussion about the Anis Bouabsa formula.  I have tried it twice so far.   The first time didn't work out at all.   The second one is the best baguette I've ever made - not saying much since I've only made a few baguettes in my thus far short baking career.  I think because the dough is so wet it kind of sags a bit and instead of a round or oval cross section, I get more of a triangular one, with a very flat spread-out base.   My inclination is to tighten it up a bit by adding more flour, but wonder why others aren't having this problem - or if it's just part of the result one expects with this wet dough.  I note that the hydration for this formula is 75% - exactly the same as for the Lahey no-knead recipe, which requires a pot to keep it in decent shape.  I am using AP flour - I see that some people are using/ recommending other flours - but the original posts say the flour isn't the point - it's the technique - so I don't know if the type of flour has something to do with the sag or not.  

The "San Joaquin Sourdough" evolved from Anis Bouabsa's formula for baguettes. Most of my deviations developed in discussion on TheFreshLoaf.com with Janedo, who first suggested adding sourdough starter and rye, and, then, leaving out the baker's yeast and making it as a "pure" pain au levain.

I have been using that formula – a 70-75% hydration dough with 90% white flour and 10% whole rye, raised with wild yeast – for the past 18 months, and it has been my favorite bread. However, I have recently begun using the mix of flours employed by Gérard Rubaud, as reported on Farine.com. The result is a bread with a wonderful aroma and flavor that can be easily made in two three to four hour blocks of time on two consecutive days.

San Joaquin Sourdough made with Gérard Rubaud's flour mix (Scaled for 1000 gms of dough)

Procedures

Mix the flours

Because the levain and the final dough use the same mix of four flours, it is most convenient to weigh them out and mix them ahead of time and use the mix, as called for in the formula.

Prepare the levain

Two days before baking, feed the starter in the evening and let it ferment at room temperature overnight.

Mixing

In a large bowl, mix the levain with the water to dissolve it. Add the flours and salt and stir to form a shaggy mass. Cover tightly and let rest (autolyse) for 20 minutes.

Using a rubber spatula or a plastic scraper, stretch and fold the dough 30 times, rotating the bowl 1/5 turn between each stroke. Cover tightly. Repeat this stretch and fold procedure 3 times more at 20 minute intervals.

 After the last series of stretches and folds, scape the dough into a lightly oiled 2 quart/2 liter container and cover tightly. (I use a 2 quart glass measuring pitcher with a tightly fitting plastic lid manufactured by Anchor Glass.)

After 45 minutes, transfer the dough to a lightly floured board and do a stretch and fold. Return the dough to the bowl. Let it rest 45 minutes and repeat the stretch and fold on the board. Return the dough to the bowl.

Fermentation

Ferment at room temperature for an hour or until it has expanded 25% or so. If you are using a glass bowl or pitcher, you should see small bubbles forming in the dough. Then place in the refrigerator and leave it there for 21 hours.

Dividing and Shaping

Take the dough out of the refrigerator and scrape it gently onto a lightly floured work surface. Gently pat it into a rectangle. Divide as desired or leave in one piece. To pre-shape for a bâtard, fold the near edge up just past the center of the dough and seal the edge by gently pressing the two layers together with the ulnar (little finger) edge of your hand or the heel of your hand, whichever works best for you. Then, bring the far edge of the dough gently just over the sealed edge and seal the new seam as described.

Cover the dough with plastic wrap and/or a kitchen towel and let it rest for 30-60 minutes, with the seams facing up. (The time will depend on ambient temperature and how active your starter is. The dough should have risen slightly, but not much.)

To shape a bâtard, fold the near edge of the dough and seal the edge, as before. Now, take the far edge of the dough and bring it towards you all the way to the work surface and seal the seam with the heel of your hand. Rotate the loaf gently toward you 1/4 turn so the last seam you formed is against the work surface and roll the loaf back and forth, with minimal downward pressure, to further seal the seam. Then, with the palms of both hands resting softly on the loaf, roll it back and forth to shape a bâtard. Start with both hands in the middle of the loaf and move them outward as you roll the loaf, slightly increasing the pressure as you move outward, so the bâtard ends up with the middle highest and the ends pointed .

Preheating the oven

One hour before baking, place a baking stone on the middle rack and prepare to steam the oven. Heat the oven to 500F.

Proofing

After shaping the loaf, transfer it to parchment paper liberally dusted with semolina or a linen couche, liberally dusted with flour. Cover the loaf with plastic wrap and a kitchen towel or a fold of the linen. Proof until the loaf has expanded to about 1-1/2 times it's original size. (30-45 minutes) Do not over-proof, if you want good oven-spring and bloom!

Baking

Pre-steam the oven.

Slip a peel or cookie sheet under the parchment paper holding the loaf or transfer to a peel, if you used a couche. Score the loaf.

Transfer the loaf (and parchment paper, if used) to the baking stone, Steam the oven and turn the oven down to 460F.

After 12-15 minutes, remove your steam source from the oven. Rotate the loaf 180 degrees, if it is br

owning unevenly. Close the oven door.

Bake for another 12-15 minutes, then remove the loaf and place on a cooling rack. Check for doneness. (Nice crust color. Internal temperature of at least 205F. Hollow sound when you thump the bottom of the loaf.) If necessary, return to loaf to the oven to bake longer.

When the loaf is done, leave it on the baking stone with the oven turned off and the door ajar for 5-10 minutes to dry and crisp up the crust.

Cooling

Cool on a rack for two hours before slicing.

David

Hi All,

I tried again with the baguettes.  This time I used 1.25 cups of flour and .5 cup of water, 1/4 teaspoon of active dry yeast (i bought the glass jar in spite of some of ya'll's advice so i'll be using it for a while.) and 1/4 teaspoon of salt (i should've used more salt)...

So, does it count as an autolyzing if I've already added the yeast and the salt? Since i've got the active dry stuff i have to soak it first and since i'm using so little water i don't have enough to divide it.

Anyway, the dough was a lot firmer than I'm used to and I'm thinking I might try an extra .25 cup of water to see what happens.  I transferred the shaped baguette onto a hot cookie sheet and that seems to have helped with oven spring.  This time the shaping was a lot better-- I took occidental's advice and dusted the flour with a sifter and that combined with how the dough was a lot more dry than what I've been using so I managed to shape a pretty pretty loaf.

My knife obviously isn't cutting it ;) when it comes to scoring.  I went to the local wal-mart to look for straight razors (is that what they're called... oops, double edged razors) well, the saleslady looked at me like i was crazy.  I also went to the hardware store to find drop canvas-- more on that in a bit-- and some quarry stones.  All the tiles they had were glazed.  There's this place down the road that has a lot of rocks and stuff so maybe they'll have some.

The bread came out a bit darker than I like and i'm not too crazy about the taste of it.  Also it's missing some salt... actually, i've got some more dough in the fridge, let me go add salt to that now...

I'll let you all know what happens when you add salt 10 hours into a cold fermentation/rising.

Here's the crumb

The bread came out sort of dry but that may have been because i tried baking at 500 for the first 10 minutes-- i won't try that again...

I don't reckon I'll count this as a victory-- except for the shaping; it's the best shaping i've been able to manage so far...

I think i put too much salt in the dough for next time... it'll be a half teaspoon for ~1.25 cups of flour.

anyway, regarding couches-- i went to the hardware store and got canvas drop cloth.  It says it's heavy-duty tight cotton weave, absorbent, washable and reusable, 8.oz. 4'x5' finished size

sorry about it being sideways... and here's as good a closeup of the weave as i could get with my camera

It's still in the plastic in case i've made a terrible mistake I can return it.

Does anyone know whether it'll work or not?  By the way, I need to wash it (with bleach as well as detergent?) then once it's dry rub flour into the weave?  is that how one turns it into a couche?

I'm still tying to make baguettes and having a lot of fun doing it.  I thought I'd try Anis Bouabsa's recipe as described by David (dmsnyder) here on Jane's (janedo) blog/page/thread(?): http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/8066/great-baguette-quest-n%C2%B03-anis-bouabsa. After converting grams to ounces to cups, or something along those lines-- I describe my "process" there-- I ended up using 1-3/4 cups of ap flour, and 6 oz of water, plus the yeast and the salt.  The ghetto comes into play because I used the everyday Pillsbury AP flour instead of the fancy stuff (I spent all my money on KA bread and white whole wheat flour), add to that that I measure by volume (I looked at scales the other day, I'm working on it) and that I spent more than 21 hours-- actually, I'm not sure how long it spent in the fridge, just that it was a little more than the 21 hours, but not much more than a few hours more, if that.

I ran into some familiar problems.

I've been proofing, shaping into baguettes on the pan that I put into the oven, letting them rise and then baking them without moving them.  My "shaping" skills leave a lot to be desired, I think my problem has to do mostly with how I'm not good at putting flour on the countertop-- so far, i put too much on and instead of rolling it just slides aroung and i end up pulling out the ends-- next time, i just won't put flour on the countertop.

This time, I tried to "pre-shape" (or something like that) the loaves so I did the push-fold-turn-push-fold seal thingy I've seen on youtube-- actually, if I'm stubborn about making mistakes, I hold this to blame: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AOSuKWJEPI&feature=fvw-- and then I rolled it-- so basically I shaped the baguette.  Then after an hour I shaped it again-- well, first I stretched it of of the parchment paper which is stuck to (I'm thinking it might be a bad idea to let it rise in a steamy oven, which I would do so that I wouldn't have to put anything over it which would then stick, but since it's sticking and messing up anyway...)  So I tried to reshape it again and roll it out on a lot of flour but I more slid it around instead.  It was also very stretchy, so I had to cut it in half and made two "baguettes" instead of one.

I also tried putting a cookie sheet in the oven to warm up before putting the loaves on it. Not surprisingly I made a mess of that and when I tried to slide the loaves onto the hot cookie sheet they slid into each other so they have a soft spot on one side-- actually though, I got what I think was some oven spring out of it... Or that may just have been because I forgot to score the loaves :S.

Anyway, here are the results of my little comedy of errors:

I couldn't find my camera last night so by the time i did we'd finished off half of one loaf.

I'm pretty happy about the crumb, though it seems to be somewhat irregularly irregular.

I'd have been ever so happy if the whole thing had come out like the right half of the above cross section... actually it might have (I forgot to mention that when i went to slide it I noticed that the tip was off the end of the parchment sheet so I tucked it in so maybe that's why the bubbles are so little.

As far as taste goes, it's not terribly fantastic.  It might have to do with the flour's brand, that the flour wasn't terribly fresh, or that I'm still trying to figure out how to balance out the salt and on this occasion I tried to guess on the miserly side.

I used more than the cup of flour I'm fond of, so for my next trick, I'll try it with 1 cup of flour and i'll figure out the rest of the ratios.  I think I'll also buy some KA brand ap flour.  I'll do the 21 hour cold rise... as far as shaping goes, I could take it out of the fridge and shape on the parchment paper i'll bake it on... but I think i'll take it out of the fridge and let it rest as a ball since I don't know what "pre-shaping" is.  I will not, however, put it in a steamy oven-- I'll cover it with oiled cling wrap instead and then a damp cloth... uy, i think it's gonna stick-- anyway, let me look some stuff up before I try...

Sergio

My 1st attempt at the Nury (very) Rustic Light Rye and Bouabsa (non) Ficelle's,  I found both dough's quite challenging to work with as i'm not used to such wet dough's but they tasted great!, will have to work on my shaping/slashing  technique!

I love Baguettes!

Lately it seams like I cant keep these in the house. I no sooner get them out of the oven and there gone.

I baked 4, here are 2 with some pieces on the side

(Obligatory crumb shot)

less then 1 hour after baking, 1 left.

Served with Pesto, Olive Tapenade, and Roasted Red Pepper and Artichoke spread.